Ex-Brooklyn Judge to Serve at Least 3 Years for Bribe

Victor I. Barron, the Brooklyn judge who pleaded guilty to receiving a bribe, returned to his former court yesterday and was led away in handcuffs after being sentenced to serve at least three years in prison.

The judge who sentenced him, Nicholas Colabella, said that Mr. Barron's effort to get a $250,000 payment in exchange for a legal ruling was incomprehensible but that the effect on public confidence in the courts was indisputable. ''You've made almost a joke out of the Kings County judges,'' said Justice Colabella, who usually sits in White Plains in Westchester.

In dispensing the three-to-nine-year sentence that Mr. Barron accepted in a plea bargain in August, Justice Colabella for the first time disclosed sealed defense arguments for a shorter sentence in the case, which has drawn rare and uncomfortable attention to the Brooklyn courts. Justice Colabella indicated that Mr. Barron, who is 61, had claimed his request for the bribe was a symptom of dementia from Alzheimer's disease or the rarer Pick's disease, a similar ailment that can cause bizarre behavior.

But even while describing the defense claim, Justice Colabella said he was not persuaded by the excuse. The act of asking for a bribe that was captured by a prosecution tape recording, Justice Colabella said to Mr. Barron, was ''a willful act on your part, a horrendous act, an act that makes me as a judge squirm.''

Justice Colabella said he had listened repeatedly to the tape recording prosecutors made in January with the help of Gary Berenholtz, the lawyer from whom Mr. Barron, then a Supreme Court justice in Brooklyn, demanded the payment. ''I got the distinct feeling, Mr. Barron, that this was not Pick's disease or an Alzheimer's moment,'' Justice Colabella said, calling Mr. Barron's action ''an act of greed'' and recklessness.

Mr. Barron's lawyer, Barry Kamins, declined yesterday to discuss what he said were reports submitted by the defense under seal. But he said Mr. Barron would argue in an appeal that the reports showed the sentence was excessive. Mr. Barron is to serve three years before he is eligible for parole. The maximum possible sentence was 5 to 15 years.

Under the plea bargain, Mr. Barron had retained the right to argue in an appeal that he should serve less time. The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said yesterday that the three-year minimum sentence would mean Mr. Barron would serve more than any other New York judge convicted of corruption.

In brief remarks in court, Mr. Barron, wearing a crisp pinstriped suit, offered no explanation for his actions. Reading a statement through half glasses, he offered apologies for what he called ''one selfish criminal act'' to family members, including his wife, and to his former colleagues in the Brooklyn courts.

''When you break the law, and commit a crime as I have done, there's a price to pay,'' he added, with his voice betraying no emotion.

Mr. Hynes did not discuss Mr. Barron's dementia defense. But when asked by reporters about the former justice's explanation for the crime, Mr. Hynes said ''the most troubling thing about his explanation was there was none.''

According to the prosecutors, in June 2001 Justice Barron took advantage of a provision of state law that requires that any settlement of a case on behalf of an infant be approved by a judge. Mr. Berenholtz, the lawyer who eventually cooperated with prosecutors, had submitted a potential settlement of an automobile accident case that would have given an injured child $4.9 million, which would have meant a lawyer's fee of $1.6 million, one-third of the settlement.

The prosecutors say Justice Barron demanded $250,000 to approve the settlement, then dropped his price to $115,000. Seven months later, when no payment had been made, he summoned Mr. Berenholtz, who then contacted Mr. Hynes's office. At the recorded meeting in January, the lawyer gave the judge $18,000.

Justice Colabella said yesterday that he would report Mr. Berenholtz to lawyers' disciplinary officials because he had not reported the bribe solicitation for seven months. Mr. Berenholtz did not respond to a telephone call seeking comment yesterday.

Mr. Hynes said he would tell the officials that ''without that lawyer I couldn't have conducted this investigation.''